It has been written that Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton could barely stand to be in the same room together. If Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson had been contemporaries, they would have had difficulty being on the same planet with each other. The differences between Hamilton and Jefferson were to an extent differences between conservative and liberal philosophies. But Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Republican party, was by any definition an aristocrat, a thinker, a philosopher, a man who abhored violence. He and Hamilton lived on the same social plane, though Hamilton's origins were more humble than those of Jefferson. Andrew Jackson, however, was a commoner, a man of humble origins, a fighter, a brawler, and a man who would have been distinctly out of place around Jefferson's table in the White House. Andrew Jackson symbolized a new age, called by historians “the Age of the Common Man.” Historians continue to refine concepts of the Age of Jacksonian Democracy, but there is no doubt that the years following Jackson's elevation to the White House were years of tremendous change and development for the United States. The story begins with the life of Jackson himself.